Mythical is too often taken to mean ‘fantasy’
or fairy tale. Such is the fate to which our society consigns mytho-poetics,
that true poetry by which men and women of former times communicated with
the gods. Let us take the words of Robert Graves seriously, for he was an
historical novelist, poet, and mythographer of great depth who lamented
the crass cynicism and materialism of our times as destructive of the human
soul. If mythology literally structured societies during most of human
history, what do we really know?
"It
is unfortunate that, despite the strong mythical element in Christianity,
‘mythical’ has come to mean ‘fanciful, absurd and unhistorical’;
for fancy played a negligible part in the development of the Greek, Latin
and Palestinian myths, or of the Celtic myths until the Norman-French trovères
worked them up into irresponsible romances of chivalry. They are all grave
records of ancient religious customs or events, and reliable enough as history
once their language is understood and allowance has been made for errors
in transcription, misunderstandings of obsolete ritual, and deliberate changes
introduced for moral or political reasons. Some myths of course have survived
in a far purer form than others; for example the Fables of Hyginus, the
Library of Appolodorus and the earlier tales of the Welsh Mabinogion make
easy reading compared with the deceptively simple chronicles of Genesis, Exodus,
Judges and Samuel. Perhaps the greatest difficulty in solving mythological
problems is that:
"Conquering gods their titles take
From the foes they captive make."
and
that to know the name of the deity at any given place or period, is far
less important than to know the nature of the sacrifices that he or she
was then offered. The powers of the gods were continuously being redefined.
The Greek god, Apollo, for instance seems to have begun as the Demon of
a Mouse fraternity in pre-Aryan totemistic Europe: he gradually rose in divine
rank by force of arms, blackmail and fraud until he became the patron of
Music, Poetry and the Arts and finally, in some regions at least, ousted
his ‘father’ Zeus from the Sovereignty of the Universe by identifying
himself with Belinus the intellectual God of Light. Jehovah, the God
of the Jews has still more complex history” (Graves 1960: 13-14).
"In Welsh, the very word for 'meaning' (ystyr) comes from the Latin historia which has given the English language both 'story' and 'history'. 'History' has now been emptied of most of the original extra-historical content of historia, which derives from a root meaning 'knowing', 'learned', 'wise man', 'judge'. The old Welsh word for 'story', cyfarwyddyd, means 'guidance', 'direction', 'instruction', 'knowledge', 'skill', 'prescription'. Its stem, arwydd, means 'sign', 'symbol', 'manifestation', 'omen', 'miracle', and derives from a root meaning 'to see'. The story teller (cyfarwyddyd) was originally a seer and a teacher who guided the souls of his hearers through the world of 'mystery' " (Rees, A. and B. 1961. Celtic Heritage. London: Thames and Hudson, pp 211-212).
